City Wendy

Meet Me In St. Louis

Tomorrow, Drew and I are flying to Missouri for a long weekend with my entire family. Everyone will be there — my sister Allison is flying in from Austin, my dad, who's been staying with her as she's recuperated from an accident, flew in earlier this week, and so did my mom, who's spending her summer off in the states like always. On Saturday we'll meet up with the whole extended family to celebrate my grandparents' 60th wedding anniversary. For Drew, who has only met some of the extended family once or twice and hasn't seen my immediate family in a year, it should be a sort of crash-course experience in what it's like to be related to these people. I hope they don't disappoint.

This'll be the first time I'm seeing my Mom since I got engaged in February and I expect the weekend to double as a sort of last-minute wedding prep session extravaganza. It'll be like all the emails she's sent me in the last few months come to life. And it should be double the fun, really, because, in addition to the wedding in New York, my parents are throwing us a reception in St. Louis the following weekend, mostly for the benefit of my grandparents who are too feeble to fly out east. But to be honest, it's been kind of a relief to have that second reception in my back pocket, because any time my Mom has a suggestion for the wedding, I can just say, "Oh, that sounds great — why don't we do that for the reception in St. Louis?" You want to be indoors for the ceremony? We'll be indoors in St. Louis! You want to hire a wedding DJ? Let's get one in St. Louis! You want a triple-tiered yellow wedding cake with chocolate fondant and a traditional topper that can be passed down to your grandkids? ST. LOUIS!!

Speaking of grandkids, I'm already prepping myself for the endless questions about when they're coming. Yesterday I was IMing with my mom and I mentioned that I'd weighed myself for the first time in a couple months and I'd apparently lost 7 pounds. "But I don't look any smaller, and my clothes don't fit any differently," I said. "ARE YOU SURE YOU AREN'T PREGNANT?" Mom quickly replied. Um, yeah, I'm pretty sure, but then again, I didn't realize that weight loss was a symptom of pregnancy, so what do I know.

Last summer when I was visiting the family in Missouri, I made the mistake of offhandedly saying something to effect of how one day, when I have kids, I might like to drop them off with my parents for part of the summer, so Drew and I could have, like, a break and my kids could put down some roots in the midwest. My mom heard that and ran with it. "Oh!" she exclaimed between bites of her breakfast, "Oh! I could take them to the library! And check out books for them! And teach them how to read! And! The pool! Your father and I could take them to the pool! And the zoo! And minor league baseball games!!! Oh, you'd like that, wouldn't you, Ed?" she said to my dad. "Whatever you say, Becky," he repIied, wiping up his fried egg with a piece of toast. I quickly changed the subject, but every few minutes, just when I thought we'd dropped it for good, my mom would pipe in: "And bible school! So they could learn all about Jesus! Even though they're going to be Jewish! It doesn't hurt to learn about him at least!" and "And shopping! For school clothes! Just like your grandparents did with you girls every summer!! Oh!!!"

I mentioned it's going to be a long weekend, right? Friday through Monday. ...Wish us luck.

Mind Over Madness

I've heard plenty of women, who, when they get pregnant or become brand new moms, go on about how forgetful they've become, like their brain cells are all going straight to the baby, and I have to wonder: if I feel like that now — like I've sort of lost part of my mind — just from planning a wedding, how on earth will I function when I get knocked up? With one month and one day to go, I've never felt more scattered or distracted. Even with my mega to-do list, I keep wondering what I've forgotten to write down, what I've neglected to think about. Moving across the country didn't require so much attention to detail.

And so, because I'm incapable of writing a thoughtful, coherent post on one topic, here's a list of random things just as scattered as my head:

1. As the wedding gets closer, the my mom's emails are getting crazier and more frequent. She's already warned me to double-check and triple-check that I don't need a slip for my wedding dress since people will be looking at me IN DIRECT SUNLIGHT. "And what about a special bra?" she's asked several times, "And what are you doing for shoes? A veil? Your purse?" Now that she's figured out what she's wearing and has micro-managed every detail of my 26 year-old sister's outfit, she's able to focus more clearly on my wedding ensemble, LUCKY ME. I've been warned to have my dress professionally pressed NOW so in case anything happens to it in the process, I'll have time to replace it, because, clearly, having a dress ironed a month before it's going to be worn makes a lot of sense.

Yesterday I got an email that went on and on about how, if I don't have a spare pair of contact lenses, I really better order one. "It is a very nerve-wracking time for you now," she wrote, explaining that I never know how my nerves could attribute to me dropping a lens and then I might have to wear glasses to my wedding — or! on my honeymoon-- or! "suffer the alternate of not being able to see anything IF I lost a lens and decided to forgo the glasses."

2. Drew and I got our marriage license Friday afternoon at the City Clerk's office, which is now my favorite place in all of New York City. Honestly, if you've never been, I totally recommend spending an hour or so checking it out. You don't have to be getting married or anything. Just show up, find a seat, and watch the action. Bring popcorn! We were there for maybe 45 minutes and saw 3 weddings. One chick getting married was so freaked out, she kept laughing nervously and making these loud, sort of awkward, inappropriate comments, like: "Oh, ha, ha, my days of boozing it up and going home with random strangers is over now, ha, ha!" And, as she made her way to the little chapel to make it official, she did this kind of a nazi march, kicking her legs up in her long ivory dress and said: "Ha, ha, dead woman walking! Ha, ha, ha!" Meanwhile, her groom looked totally relaxed and chilled out. I bet he took something before hand.

It was really fun to watch all the different couples and see how well-matched everyone was. There was this one aging hipster couple — well, aging, as in, you know, MY age — and the woman was in these horrible, awful 80's glasses that magnified her eyes, like, 10 times their normal size, and she wore her hair in two, long, greasy pigtails, and carried a canvas tote bag and wore super-skinny jeans and ballet flats and walked in small, pigeon-toed steps, which I'm sure was an affected thing, with her thin, gangly arm looped through her fiance's. He wasn't nearly as memorable as she was, but his floppy hair definitely matched hers in terms of greasiness, and he wore ironic glasses, too, and I couldn't help but wonder if either of their moms were sending them emails suggesting they order contact lenses NOW, and warning them to wear appropriate undergarments on their wedding day.

3. After seeing some very unflattering photos of me taken at my bachelorette party last weekend, I've decided to kick up the exercise and make some radical changes in my diet. For example, no more booze!! Well, not no-more, no-more, but close to no more. Like, I'll drink a glass of wine now and then, but the beer, margaritas, and nights of 4 or 6 drinks are OVER (at least until the honeymoon — you can't go to Spain and not enjoy pitchers of Sangria, come on). Also, I've started doing yoga again. Well, I've done it twice — Sunday (at the annual Summer Solstice Yoga in Times Square) and yesterday, but I can already feel a difference, both physically and mentally. And I found a studio 3 blocks from my apartment that I really like, so I think I'm going to make yoga a habit — something to help me get in shape quickly for the wedding, yes, but I plan to continue it well after that. Now that i'm giving up margaritas, I'll need something to help me deal with my mother's emails, after all.

Where Do You Wish To Wake Up Tomorrow?

I'm loving the new online video series "Fifty People, One Question." The project works like this: the producers stake out a busy area in an urban neighborhood, ask 50 people the same question, film their responses, and then edit them together into a short video segment that gets posted online. This one is from Brooklyn where fifty people were asked where they wish to wake up tomorrow.

Me? I'm pretty content with where I wake up every morning — next to the guy I love in a city I adore. Still, if I could wake up in, say, a 3-bedroom apartment across the street from Prospect Park in Brooklyn with a dishwasher, central air, a washing machine and a rooftop deck with a view of the city, that'd be okay, too. Where do YOU wish to wake up tomorrow?

No Penis Products Here

I had such a great time in Chicago that I came *this* close to extending my trip a few days, but the I remembered that, holy shit, my wedding is in 5 and a half weeks, and I started thinking about my to-do list and had such terrible anxiety dreams, I decided I better get back to town and get down to bizniss. Seriously, I had one dream that I lost my engagement ring and went crazy looking for it and when I finally found it, it was shattered in a million pieces, which, obviously, is a metaphor for my MIND because nothing makes you more insane and scatter-brained than worrying about wedding details, except maybe being pregnant, but I wouldn't know about that. Yet. And then I had a dream that my hair started falling out in clumps and it was so vivd and realistic, I woke up and searched my pillow for signs of stray hair.

Oh, but being in Chicago was so relaxing and pleasant and made me feel homesick all over again. On Saturday afternoon I drank too much tequila at the Andersonville street fest and ended up doing that ugly drunked snot-cry with a friend of mine right there in the middle of everyone. "I just miss you SO MUCH!" I sniffed, throwing my arms around her. "GOD! You don't even KNOW. SO MUCH!!" And she was crying, too and wiping my face with the back of her hands and it was all pretty ridiculous. Another friend said he saw us walking through the park later that afternoon and we were a rambling, wobbling mess. I guess it wasn't any surprise I woke up with a killer hangover the next morning.

My hangover was so bad, in fact, that after I met a friend for breakfast I apologized and said I didn't think I could make it to the beach like we'd planned because I needed to go sleep for an hour or two before I could even think about carrying on with life.
"But..." she said, wrinkling her forehead and narrowing her eyes, "but..."
"Are you mad?" I said, "I'm really sorry, but I feel like shit. I drank too much last night -- I really need to go lie down for a little bit or I might DIE. Really."
"But you have to go to the beach!" she said.

Suddenly she whipped out her phone and started texting away, telling me she was giving her roommate a message she forgot to tell her earlier. Then I got a text from another friend who said he was at the beach with his dogs and I should stop by, so I turned to Katy and said, "Fine, I'll go to the damn beach if it's such a big damn deal for everyone, but I'm not staying long!" And of course, you know where this is going. I got to the lakefront at Foster and a bunch of my friends were gathered under a canopy for a surprise bachelorette party for me. There were cupcakes and gourmet sandwiches and pasta salad and plenty of champagne and vodka lemonade, and after a litlte hair of the dog, I was good as new. Better than new! I was so happy and touched by the whole thing and loved every minute of the afternoon. It was the perfect bachelorette party — my best friends at my favorite place with perfect weather and no dorky penis products. I felt completely loved and supported and it was what anyone would want before she gets married.

Ironically, an article I wrote on the "death of single-girl friendships" made the homepage of CNN the next day and the comments were fucking outrageous. The essay was about the difficulty of moving away from my friends and about transitioning into a new chapter of my life, one that doesn't leave as much time to invest in friendships like I was able to when living the single life in Chicago. People went insane -- calling me horrible and immature and the "epitome of everything wrong with women today." One person called me a "succubus," someone else called me the scum of the earth. Dozens, if not hundreds of people, weighed in on the likelihood of my marriage disintegrating within two years and how I'd "deserve it" when it happened because I have such little respect for anyone but myself. One person even said she wished my husband would die and I'd be all alone because I'd dumped all my friends as soon as I found Mr. Right. And, wow, there sure are a lot of angry, bitter people out there...and apparently they all hang out on CNN.com all day. Anyway, I'm glad the people I love know how I feel about them. And now, thanks to a little tequila and a beautiful afternoon, everyone at the Andersonville street fest knows, too.

Four Very Pressing Matters

1. After over a year and a half as a card-carrying New York Public Library user, I finally realized I can actually go online and order any book I want from any of the city branches to be delivered to my neighborhood library only 2 blocks away. Why wasn't I aware of this before? Because I'm stoopid, I guess. Anyway, this revelation is so exciting! I basically started going through your recommendations from the other day and am ordering and reading my way through all of them (well, that's the plan anyway). I finished "Julie and Julia" a couple days ago, and picked up "The Curious Incident of the Dog in The Nighttime," "My Life in France," and "Modern Love: 50 True and Extraordinary Tales of Desire, Deceit, and Devotion" this afternoon. After I finished "J&J" — which I quite liked — and before I checked out today's stack, I began reading "I Was Told There'd Be Cake," a book I receievd for Xmas and started reading a couple months ago but only got a couple chapters into. I think it's better than I initially gave it credit for, but it's not, like, going on my list of faves or anything.

Anyhow, thanks again for all your great recommendations, and if you think of more I might like, please let me know. My New Year's resolution was to read a book a week, a goal I'm pathetically behind on, but from now until the end of the year I hope to read at least 5 books a month, maybe 6. I'll periodically update you on what I've been reading and what I'd recommend. Maybe we can have something like a summer book club or whatnot.

2. This time tomorrow I'll be in Chicago where I'll stay until Tuesday evening. It'll be my first visit back since September and I'm SO excited. I can't wait to hang out with friends, hit the lake front, maybe take a few bike rides, and not think about wedding plans for five whole days!

3. Speaking of wedding plans, the musicians we hired seem to have fallen off the face of the planet — they haven't returned my emails for the last several weeks and never cashed my retainer check (which I've now cancelled), so if you know a violin player or two in NY who plays weddings, let me know. Also, we have the cutest little ringer bearer ever (Drew's 2 1/2 year-old nephew) but may not actually have any rings since the designers seem to have fallen off the planet along with the musicians. And they did manage to cash my deposit check for $500 before they disappeared, so I do hope they come back with some very nice rings in time for our wedding, otherwise I GUESS WE CAN'T GET MARRIED. Or something.

4. I CANNOT WAIT TO BE DONE WEDDING PLANNING, OH MY GOD, IT SUCKS BIG DONKEY BALLS.

In The Driver's Seat

It occurred to me today that it's been well over a year and a half — a year and nine months, actually — since I last drove a car. Part of me wonders how long I can go without ever driving one again, and the more practical part of me thinks I better practice sometime soon before I lose the skill completely (or is it like riding a bike and you never really forget how?). If Drew was a driver I might not worry about it so much, but since he's a born and bred Manhattanite, he never bothered to learn how. When we fantasize about spending a summer traveling around the country, we can never really picture who's in the driver's sear since one of us doesn't know a clutch from a glove department and the other would rather swallow a gallon of antifreeze than spend hours behind the wheel.

I didn't always hate driving so much. Back in Missouri when I first got my car, the summer before my senior year of college, the summer I became friends with Chad, I used to love driving. Sometimes I'd pick Chad up around 10:30 or so, after he got done with his show, and we'd drive down Cherry St. out past the city limits into the country where the road was hilly and moonlit. There was never anyone else out there at that time of the night and we'd roll the windows down and listen to Paul Simon or Shawn Colvin and feel the warm summer air on our necks and imagine we could live forever like that and always be happy.

That fall, in an effort to educate me on different music, my friend Alex made me a mixed tape with a lot of Jill Scott and Lauryn Hill and the Fugees and the Roots and I wore it out on my drives down Cherry. My favorite was Lauryn Hill's cover of Bob Marley's "Turn Your Lights Down Low" and sometimes I'd play that song on repeat a dozen times or more, singing out the window, thinking only as far as the next three minutes and thirty seconds, life was just that easy.

After I moved to Chicago my love affair with driving came to a sudden halt. This was aided in large part to my crashing my car on Lake Shore Drive, the only remotely relaxing stretch of road in all of Chicago (but only during the weekday afternoons and definitely not on days the Cubs had a home game). I have a feeling that even if i hadn't been in that accident a few months before I moved there, which made it impossible to ever fully let my guard down on LSD, it wouldn't have taken me long to hate driving in the city. The traffic there is insane, the worst, absolutely the most miserable...maybe in the whole world -- certainly in all the midwest. I can't tell you how many traffic-induced panic attacks I suffered at the wheel. It's in the hundreds, for sure. So when I took up biking again in my 4th or 5th year there after a 15-year hiatus, it was such a relief to have another mode of transportation besides my car and the god forsaken CTA (oh God, don't get me started on the CTA).

So, anyway, I guess I sort of forgot — at least on a visceral level — what it was like to really enjoy losing myself in a long drive. Eventually driving became nothing more than a mostly taxing and stressful way to get from Point A to Point B. In my final years in Chicago, when gas prices soared and my car kept breaking down every other month, it also became an insanely expensive way to get around. And so when I moved to Manhattan, I was more than relieved to unload my car on the first sucker to take it off my hands, and free myself from such a burden. Since then I haven't had to worry about moving my car at 6 AM for street cleaning, or feeding a meter every half hour, or incurring hundreds of dollars in parking tickets. I don't study driving directions from mapquest at red lights anymore or accidentally take wrong turns down one-way streets 3 miles from where I supposed to be, or get asked for rides by anyone not "lucky" enough to own his or her own car. I'm free!

But sometimes, when I listen to one of those old driving songs, and I remember how easy it all used to be, I miss it. And I can almost feel the warm summer air on my neck and in my hair.

My Secret, Secret Garden

This is the spot in the Central Park where Drew and I have been planning to hold our wedding. It's a super sweet, very romantic little spot called the English Garden, or Secret Garden. There's a big shade tree and a reflecting pool with water lillies and real live fish and that adorable statue of the boy and girl holding a little bird bath. It's perfect...for an early spring or fall wedding of about 15 guests, not a wedding in the middle of summer with around 75 guests. 

We rode our bikes around the park yesterday and stopped by the garden to check things out. I hadn't been since shortly after we applied for a permit, back when we were still thinking we'd have a super small wedding with family and a handful of our closest friends. Well, things have changed and suddenly our guest list is close to 4 times that. And, of course, we're thrilled circumstances have made it possible to include more of the people we love, but standing there in the English Garden yesterday with the sun beating down on me and sweat pooling around my pits, all I could think was: "How the fuck are we gonna pull this off?"

"How the fuck are we gonna pull this off?!" I whined to Drew.

 "We'll put the Chuppah over here and people can kinda stand over there," he said, pointing vaguely at a spot beneath the tree. 

"Okay, and where are the other 70 guests going to go?" I asked.

"Like, around the bushes and stuff. It'll be fine!" he said, ever the optimist.

"Around the bushes?! God, this is gonna to suck!" I wailed. "It's gonna to be hot as balls and there won't be a place for anyone to stand and there isn't even an aisle or anything and it's totally going to suck and everyone's going to be miserable and my mother will never stop complaining about what an awful time she had for the rest of her life. We'll have to hear about it forever!"

"It won't be that bad," Drew said, trying to sooth me.

"Oh, and that's just how you want to remember your wedding, isn't it?" I said. "'It wasn't that bad!' It's going to be terrible!!"

I'd basically resigned myself to moving the wedding to the restaurant where we're having the reception, our back-up plan for bad weather, when I was suddenly struck by inspiration as Drew and I walked our bikes through one of the large walkways in the Conservatory Garden. "Wait!" I said, "What if we do it right here!" 

"That's what I thought the first time I came to check the place out," Drew said.

"I mean, it could work, right? It's completely shaded, it works as a natural aisle, we could have the musicians over here," I said, pointing off to the side, "and the Chuppah here, and we could put a few chairs right in front for people who need to sit, and everyone else could stand here, and here. It could work!"

We immediately tracked down one of the park rangers or whatever the hell they're called and told them our plan. "Do you think we could just do the wedding in that walkway?" I asked. And they said as long as no one else is doing a wedding in one of the other gardens that day, it shouldn't be a problem. And you know what? Even if people are having a wedding in one of the other gardens that day,I'm gonna get all Bridezilla on their asses and use that walkway, anyhow. There's another walkway, like, 2 feet away so everyone can just suck it, that's what I say. 

You can't tell in the picture, but the head of the walkway meets up with a perpendicular walkway, opening things up quite a bit. There's room for a chuppah, the musicians, a few chairs. I think we'll get, like, a makeshift platform to stand on, and we'll pass out little fans and shit, and well, I think we can pull it off! Oh God, I hope it doesn't rain.

Date Night, Shmate Night

You know what phrase I really can't stand? Date Night! God, that term makes my skin crawl. It's almost as bad as "making love," but unlike that term, which is at least saved for the 4th hour of the Today Show and maybe the occasional Oprah, "Date Night" is all anyone talks about anymore thanks to the Obama's. The New York Times ran a 1000-word article the other day on how they got dressed up, flew to New York for the evening, went out to a fancy dinner and then took a limo to a Broadway show. The Obama's are bringing back Date Night!!! Even the late night talk shows were all a-buzz with the news. Jon Stewart warned the president to "take it down a notch, dude" -- apparently, he's making married men in the rest of the country look bad. 

I can't imagine the Europeans having Date Nights, can you? It seems a typically American phenomenon, like shoving all the potential sexiness of night out with a significant other into a pair of ill-fitting Spanx. Even if the sexiness is still there, it muffins at the top awkwardly and makes the simple act of sitting down a chore. The Europeans would at least have the decency to wear the right size.

Why do we have to name everything, anyway? Why are we so obsessed with giving everything a category and qualification? Sunday Brunch, Summer Vacation, First Couple. And now dinner and a movie can't just be a date anymore, it has to be this superfluous Date Night, particularly if you're married and especially if you have children under the age of, say, 13. "You don't have regular Date Nights with Joe?" one wife can ask the other. "Well, Tom and I didn't have Date Nights either for the longest time and then someone on Oprah said it was the easiest way to save a marriage and now we have them once a week and we've never been happier!"

It seems to me that Date Nights are reserved solely for couples who don't have spontaneous sex anymore. They're for couples who work too much or aren't that attracted to each other or have a million kids and responsibilities taking up all their time. It's a euphemism, really, for Eating Dinner At A Restaurant Before Going Home, Paying the Baby-sitter, And Then Having Sex Night. I guess that's too long to say on television every five minutes or write out in the Times every other sentence, but I wouldn't be opposed to just calling it Sex Night. Oh, but for the love of God, just don't start calling it "Making Love Night." I might have to move to Europe if that happens.

These Are The Days

If you're a longtime reader of this blog, you may remember about 3 years ago when my youngest cousin was in a terrible car accident that killed his friend and left John in a coma for several weeks. He was 16 at the time, an awesome kid, and was driving just five minutes away to his friend's aunt's place to mow her lawn. As John merged onto a 4-lane road, his view was obstructed by cornstalks and he didn't see the big Dodge Ram speeding towards him he until it plowed right into his car.

My aunt, John's mother, saw the accident that evening on the local news as she was talking on the phone to the mother of the other boy. Neither one of them had heard from their sons in hours and they were trying to figure out where they might be. I'm not sure my aunt even realized it was her car in that accident on the news, but moments later there was a knock at the door and John's older sister, who was home from college, saw a cop car outside their window, and my aunt, who suddenly put all the pieces together, started screaming, screaming at the cop to please go away. When she finally let him in, she said: "Just tell me. Is he alive?" 

He was alive, but for a while, just barely. It was weeks before he woke up, and several months before he went home. And since then he's been through a shit-ton of surgeries and physical therapy. He's not back to how he used to be and the trajectory of his life was forever changed in that moment, but this weekend he's graduating from high school, an accomplishment he must surely be proud of.

My cousin's especially close to our grandparents, being the youngest of all their grandchildren, the only boy, and our grandfather's namesake. Those first few days and weeks after his accident, I prayed for John, of course, and for his parents and his sister and the family of his friend who was killed, but I also prayed for my grandparents that they'd never suffer something so terrible as losing a grandchild. And so I'm beyond grateful that they're both still around to celebrate John's graduation this weekend, especially considering their health issues in recent years. And I'm grateful we all get to celebrate their60th wedding anniversary at the end of the month, "God willing" my grandmother continues to say in earnest as she has for the last year. 

My cousin's graduation, my grandparent's 60th wedding anniversary, and ME actually getting married. It's what my grandmother might call a Summer of Miracles. God willing.

Some Things I'm Addicted To

1. Haagen Dazs frozen yogurt (particularly the Dulce de Leche flavor)

2. Email

3. Sweeping my kitchen floor (I have to do this 3 times a day or I feel "off")

4. Trying on clothes at Anthropologie

5. The show, "What Not To Wear"

6. Scrambled egg whites

7. The restaurant, Nook, in my neighborhood

8. Flowers 

9. Riding my bike

10. Alcohol (but, like, not in a way that it's a problem)

Things I wish I were addicted to:

1. Writing cover and query letters

2. Doing crunches

3. Cooking organic, well-balanced meals

4. Saving money

5. Working really hard